This weekend we learned of Samer Elzaenen, a journalist regularly used by BBC Arabic who turns out to be…oh go on, have a guess. Yes! A Jew hater.
Elzaenen has said that there should be a second Holocaust: “We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left.” He has recommended that, “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything” and uses the social media hashtag: “#WeAreAllHamasYouSonofaJewess”.
Perfect, in other words, for the BBC. So perfect, in fact, that he has appeared on BBC Arabic more than a dozen times since the October 7, 2023 massacre.
On over 30 occasions on social media he has described attacks on Jews as “blessed” and “heroic” and called the terrorists “heroes” and “martyrs” who as a result will have “ascended” to “heaven”.
But the reaction to the reporting of Elzaenen’s views was in many ways more interesting than the actual story. Because there basically was no reaction.
So used are we now to the BBC employing rabid Jew haters that no one even looks up from their morning coffee when it emerges that one of its regular contributors wants to see Jews burned alive. No one is even remotely shocked that the BBC is using the likes of Elzaenen, because it’s so entirely to be expected.
As for the BBC, it responded with the truly pathetic, “These are not BBC members of staff or part of the BBC’s reporting team”, as if whether Mr Elzaenen and his fellow Jew-hating colleagues are on PAYE is the real issue.
The BBC’s statement went on: “International journalists including the BBC are not allowed access into Gaza so we hear from a range of eyewitness accounts from the strip… We were not aware of the individuals’ social media activity prior to hearing from them on air. We are absolutely clear that there is no place for anti-semitism on our services.”
It's certainly true that Elzaenen helps the BBC provide “a range of eyewitness accounts”. Adding a Hitler fan-boy to the BBC’s roster of “Israel is evil incarnate” journalists extends the range, albeit marginally.
And, of course, there is the usual “there is no place for anti-semitism on our services” which, as I wrote last week, always means the exact opposite: that there is an entrenched place for antisemitism or, as Danny Cohen, former controller of BBC One, has put it, “systemic problems of antisemitism and bias”.
My favourite recent example of this systemic bias was when the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell reported on the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. He had, she told us, been overseeing peace talks and so “despite his tough rhetoric” some “analysts” saw him as actually “moderate and pragmatic”.
Such a moderate and pragmatic man, who just happened to be head of an organisation that butchered 1,200 Jews. (Knell called his killing “shocking” for good measure).
One broadcast featuring a Jew hater might be a mistake. Two is problematic. Three, surely a pattern. But one after the other without end? It's an epidemic. A deluge. You might even call it a campaign. And so one so obvious, to so many, that when the latest example emerges, no one even bats an eyelid.
